Average age of people on this forum

[vbwins]

I thought it might be interesting to see the average age of the people using this forum and if they are all old bullets like me. I started with basic at the age of 14 on a pdp11/03 and am now 61 !!
cheers

[Peter Swinkels]

I just turned 43. Started at age 12 with QBasic 1.0 on MS-DOS 5.0 running on my parents's Highscreen 80386 SX 25 MHz. (80mb hdd in a removable tray, 3.5" and 5.25" drive, standard VGA card, 2mb RAM, also had Windows 3.0 (urgh))

Can't remember much else atm. :-)

[vbwins]

Hi Peter, So your a youngster ! Cheers Andrew

[Zvoni]

51, with my first Database on a C64 in BASIC sometime Mid-80's

[The trick]

I'm 31, ZX Spectrum (Sinclair Basic)

[Zvoni]

I'm 31

young whippersnapper!


I remember.
At 31 i was young and attractive.
Today i'm just "and"..

[dz32]

48, first basic was programming choose your own adventure games on a commodore pet and casset tape storage around 10, but didn’t really start programming again till 27. Just gaming in between

[vbwins]

So I really am an old bullet.

[dz32]

I have occasionally see users post reference to thier age and been surprised by some 80yr olds still at it. My guess is average will be 65 How do we embed one of those visual poll things. Might get more anonymously

[fafalone]

39... I expect most people here are those who've been programming in VB6 since it was the brand new sparkling successor to VB5, at a minimum, and that was over 20 years ago. I started with VB4 when I was 14 to modify and soon make my own programs for AOL (chat room games, utilities to automate UI actions, and yes some particularly immature stuff like 'punters' that sent people specially crafted IMs that crashed AOL. Later, I paired it with a leaked debug tool allowing arbitrary code execution of their internal scripting language we had reverse engineered to access and catalog every single form and download library on the service, including normally inaccessible employee tools).

I had been using TI-BASIC (a version of BASIC on TI calculators) for a couple years before that to make my calculator do all the work for me... it screwed me over eventually when I reached a level of math even a CAS couldn't help with, but my love of programming definitely started there

[dilettante]

I turned 66 this year. I first used Basic and Fortran in 1973 on a GE timesharing system via Teletype, later that year Fortran and Cobol on an IBM 1620 and an IBM S/370 via punched cards and printouts.

Prior to that my programming experience was books where you wrote out machine language programs. You "ran" them by executing them by hand one opcode at a time recording changes to registers and memory.

[Arnoutdv]

55, started with TurboBasic on the Atari 800XL

[jg.sa]

0b111101 - started at 0xE with punch cards DEC PDP 11/23 - Assembler Basic & C !++ ( ABC )

[SamOscarBrown]

Option Explicit



Private Sub Command1_Click()
    Dim dYob As Date
    Dim dMob
    Dim iMonthsOfLife As Integer
    Dim iYearsOfLife As Integer
    dYob = 1950
    dMob = Month(#1/1/1950#)
    iYearsOfLife = DateDiff("y", dYob, Year(Now))
    iMonthsOfLife = Month(Now) - dMob
    Debug.Print iYearsOfLife & ", " & iMonthsOfLife & " (less a few days!)"
End Sub

Started with a TRS-80 CoCo

[vbwins]

I expect most of us older guys are self taught. My first basic program at school was to calculate the speed of my control line model airplane in MPH. I started work as a computer operator and night shifts were so long and boring I used the time to learn Cobol (yuck) , fortran, VAX Assembler and of course VAX basic. My first lifestyle program was written to read the listing file for a very large print job which a balance we had to check right at the end so we knew if the job had worked without waiting for the print to finish. I have to admit we used that one to go home early on more than one occasion.

[SamOscarBrown]

0b111101 - started at 0xE with punch cards DEC PDP 11/23 - Assembler Basic & C !++ ( ABC )

Young'n (comparatively)!

Sammi

[vbwins]

SamOscarBrown is winning "the oldest VB programmer in the world" at the moment. Respect.

[Peter Swinkels]

hi vbwins, relatively speaking, yes! ;-)

btw, I am mostly a self-taught programmer

[Delaney]

I am 50 and I started with Basic on the sanyo PHC 25 then on the sanyo MSX PHC 28 (I still have it !), I was around 12 ±1 (don't remember exactly)

[vbwins]

hi vbwins, relatively speaking, yes! ;-)

btw, I am mostly a self-taught programmer

I think a lot of here are. Cheers Andrew

[techgnome]

I am 50 and I started with Basic on the sanyo PHC 25 then on the sanyo MSX PHC 28 (I still have it !), I was around 12 ±1 (don't remember exactly)

Nice ... somewhere in storage I have a Timex Sinclare 1000 ... with a whopping 1k memory!

won't reveal exact age, but I'm in the range between fafone and zvoni ...

Learned on the Apple][e ... Including the summer camp learning Apple Basic & Logo ... I have taken exactly 4 technical courses ... the two summer camps, C++, and databases .... the rest is all self taught/learned on the job.

-tg

[Peter Swinkels]

This one looks like the one my parents owned except theirs had beige disk drives.

Attachment 186150

Attachment doesn't work. Here's a url:
http://www.classiccomputer.de/pc/high386sx1.jpg

They didn't have proper ict education at my high school back then. They taught the rudiments of how to use a pc. Useful to most perhaps, but it bored me. The closest they ever got to teaching programming was unsuccessfully introducing BASIC. And Logo, which might be nice for the absolute basics but hardly is a true programming language imho. They finally allowed me to explore programming myself on school computers. Yes, a few class mates were into programming too and I learned a little from them.

EDIT:
Why fafalone, you pulled immature pranks? I never did that! (ahem)

[FunkyDexter]

50

young whippersnapper!

We should chase him with walking sticks. But I'm tired.

[Peter Swinkels]

50

We should chase him with walking sticks. But I'm tired.

LOL

So am I. Darn daylight saving time nonsense.

[Shaggy Hiker]

55. Started on a TRS-80 Level 1, with 4K RAM and a tape drive. Self taught. Wearing out.

[couttsj]

Gee, all these youngsters. The first computer I ever worked on was as big as a desk and ran on tubes. And all it did was multiple and divide. The first Basic I ever used was on a main frame, and the first computer I ever owned was the Radio Shack TRS-80, which I connected to an old teletype as a printer. That would make me about 76, and still kicking.

J.A. Coutts

[Peter Swinkels]

@couttsj: now I am waiting for a 90-100 yo to post here and talk about mechanical computing devices... :-)

[saturnian]

I am 64 years old.
I assembled my ZX 81 as a kit and started using Basic. I continued on ZX Spectrum, then on ATARI ST (GFA Basic). On the ST, I programmed several of my first professional medical software. Then I switched to PC in VB3, VB4, VB5 then VB6, and a little in VB.net.

[wes4dbt]

Yeah, I started on a Abacus.

Not really, I'm a youngster, just 69. I didn't write my first program till I was 25. It was Fortran, using punch cards on a mainframe. I actually took a VB3 night class at the local college, @ '94. So technically I'm not self taught. But that class was very basic BASIC. How to use the IDE, which controls did what and "Hello World". Unfortunately not many businesses wanted a program that said "Hello World". lol

I wonder if their is a lot of self taught younger programmer. The internet would easily make that possible but how would the job market be without a degree.

[Shaggy Hiker]

I have done some calculations using a slide rule, which I still have, but I've forgotten how to do math on one since then. The UI wasn't the best, especially on the more complicated ones.

[wes4dbt]

I have done some calculations using a slide rule, which I still have, but I've forgotten how to do math on one since then. The UI wasn't the best, especially on the more complicated ones.

Was this something you did on your own or was it part of a class? Because the hand held calculators killed off slide rules a long time ago.

[dilettante]

We used slide rules in Trig, calculators weren't really "a thing" yet. Sure, there were a few around with nixie tube displays but fairly large. I think in Senior year the Physics lab got a TI SR-70 "Doorstop" handheld LED unit and I think the "SR" series moniker meant "slide rule."

I'm positive I still have a 1970s slide rule in a box here somewhere.

[wes4dbt]

We used slide rules in Trig, calculators weren't really "a thing" yet. Sure, there were a few around with nixie tube displays but fairly large. I think in Senior year the Physics lab got a TI SR-70 "Doorstop" handheld LED unit and I think the "SR" series moniker meant "slide rule."

I'm positive I still have a 1970s slide rule in a box here somewhere.

I started college later in life. @ 25, 1978. I might not have taken trig till @ 80. No slide rules.

[dilettante]

That was still high school here.

[ChrisE]

I'm 59, self taught, since Aug. of this year retired, my wife (age 61 retired Vet) and I will get into the Garden-Work (Veggies etc...)
bought a nice Property with a big Pond that need's a lot of work done, there's not one Plant in it.

[el84]

SamOscarBrown is winning "the oldest VB programmer in the world" at the moment. Respect.

I am 82, but I don't qualify as a programmer these days. Just a Vb6 and MMBasic tinkerer!

[el84]

... the first computer I ever owned was the Radio Shack TRS-80, which I connected to an old teletype as a printer...

Me too, exactly. God Bless David Lien (Tandy model 1 guide plus own BASIC reference book)

[Shaggy Hiker]

Was this something you did on your own or was it part of a class? Because the hand held calculators killed off slide rules a long time ago.

On my own.

[jg.sa]

G'Day vbwins

VAX Assembler and of course VAX basic

Now that takes me back, do you know that the original Google Maps was built on VMS for "birds on a rail' using these languages ?

The ye olde

mc sys$system:CREATE_SPECIAL_ACCOUNTS.COM

[wes4dbt]

On my own.

it figures. lol